Like the American outer space program in the 1960s, the Rule Breaker Port blasted ahead, from behind, to pass the evil Nasdaq, with the BreakerPort's afterburners glowing red hot as it pulled away. With AOL, eBay, and Celera pushing this rocket higher, the port gained 11% on Wednesday and 9% on Thursday.
Celera (NYSE: CRA) was the brightest star, rising from a split-adjusted $130 last Friday to $270 this Friday (at last look -- the price could change), or 107%. What was the big news? Nothing new. Celera's management is on the road trying to sell more than 1 million new shares of stock to the public. The price tag? Rising daily.
Other than that, not a peep of additional news arose from the company. All the news that people need to know is already out there, apparently: Celera could finish sequencing the human genome fairly soon this year, ahead of schedule. In fact, Celera plans to use money raised from the stock offering to essentially increase its "study" power, which is the next step for its business -- it must study what genes do what, how we can stop certain diseases, and so forth.
The company has a market value topping $14 billion and meaningless revenue. The bet is that Celera can grow revenue quickly by selling genomic information in expensive, long-term contracts to pharmaceutical giants and other corporations.
eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) is much less of a gamble than Celera at this point, simply because eBay has an established business in the U.S. and, increasingly, in other parts of the world. Today eBay shared that eBay.de -- or eBay Germany -- is now the second-largest online auction site in the world, with over $600,000 in daily gross merchandise sales. The site is second behind only eBay itself (which has $10 million in daily merchandise sales), meaning that eBay Germany is now larger than Yahoo! Auctions or Amazon Auctions -- and by a considerable amount.
eBay's CEO, Meg Whitman, is making the rounds, and yesterday at a conference in the Old World she shared that eBay is looking at partners for expansion into Scandinavia, partly because this area of the world has one of the highest levels of Internet use per capita. She also reassured people that eBay, although it is moving as quickly as feasible, doesn't always need to be first to a new market in order to win or lead that market. The eBay brand is strong enough that it precedes it, helping eBay's new international sites quickly gain traction. eBay opened its eBay Japan site this week. Japan is added to an eBay roster that includes the U.K., Germany, Australia, and others. A meaningful and growing portion (over 20%) of Amazon's (Nasdaq: AMZN) revenue was recently derived overseas, and eBay will mirror that sort of revenue trend.
eBay's business-to-business site, eBay Pro, is doing well in Germany, and Meg Whitman is surely investigating it firsthand during her travels. A great deal of additional shareholder value could be created if eBay entered business-to-business commerce in the United States -- so hurry on home, Ms. Whitman, and flip the switch on eBay's business commerce division! (Er, when you're ready.)
Excite@Home (Nasdaq: ATHM) hasn't been able to drum up excitement, perhaps because its overall mission isn't incredibly clear. This week the company announced that it will create a new portal aimed at businesses, called Work.com. Excite@Home is partnering with Dow Jones & Co. for the new venture, and management is confident that it will be "a homerun." So far, the stock has been a bunt this past year. To get some potential value off the bench, Excite will be spun-off into a tracking stock this August, and Work.com will be represented by a separate tracking stock as well. We'll be keeping track.
I didn't pull the trigger on our preannounced Foolish Four sale yet -- it wasn't a priority today. We have four market days remaining to conduct the sale. After we bid farewell to our Four Friends, we'll have cash that we want to see invested sooner rather than later in a new Rule Breaker.
Is Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) a Rule Breaker? Not according to the Rule Maker Port, since Yahoo! has been in the MakerPort for a long time -- and right now, they're happy that they bought Yahoo! instead of our holding, America Online (NYSE: AOL). Which company do you think has the brighter future? Yahoo! or AOL? -- take our poll today to answer! This is a key topic that Tom and David will discuss (and debate!) on this weekend's Fool Radio Show. They'll also interview the Chairman and CEO of Human Genome Sciences (Nasdaq: HGSI), Mr. William Haseltine.
Finally, today I discussed the mistakes that we've (I've) made in Drip Port. Have a good, Foolish, exciting, relaxing weekend. Fool Down!
--Jeff Fischer, TMF Jeff on the boards.
